1835: Declaration of the Independence of New Zealand

October 28, 2022

By AHNZ

Today in history, 28 October, 1838, a contrived ceremony took place at Waitangi.

Maoris had no input into it and didn’t really know what was going on. In theory they had picked a flag the year before but in reality they didn’t even understand the concept of what it meant to vote for one preference above another. This is a cognitive task we take for granted today but one based on social learning and the Maoris didn’t have it.

Too bad for them because the proximity of certain chiefs was required for James Busby to carry out his plan: The Declaration of the Independence of New Zealand.

Busby shored up his political position and fended off the in-coming French nobility on the make, Baron de Thierry. After the ‘official’ works were done, Busby and his friends retired to a lavish meal. The Maoris were treated to a cauldron of cold porridge to eat with their fingers!

The British Frigate HMS Alligator fired 21-gun salute for the ‘United Tribes’ as the signing of the Declaration. Yet, the same ship a year before had been be aiming the same guns at Maoris; Bombarding a Taranaki Maori village out of existence. This isn’t peacemaking and unity or even pretending to be any more than it was a genuine consensus or decision. It was an exercise of will power. Busby’s.

Those Taranaki tribesmen were, in general terms with all the others not included, spoken to by the Declaration in Part 3: “The hereditary chiefs and heads of tribes….cordially invite the Southern tribes to lay aside their private animosities and to consult the safety and welfare of our common country, by joining the Confederation of the United Tribes.”

It’s absurd to think the homeless Taranaki tribesmen, or others, should just ‘lay aside their animosity’ and trek through hostile enemy territory to Waitangi. There, under the guard of the Alligator that destroyed their settlement, to attend formal gatherings for lawmaking over all New Zealand? It’s a farce.

This Part is also addressing the crippled and scattered Ngati Tahu of the South Island and their victorious Ngati Toa foe. The genocide was still fresh and hundreds of slaves were in captivity. Body parts from the conquered Maoris were being made into consumer items such as powder flasks yet Busby says ‘lay aside your private animosities’ and come have a Western-style government with annual meetings up here at Waitangi? If the signatories really understood this Declaration they wouldn’t have entertained such a farce as this!

“By the last arrivals, we understand, that there are vast quantities of heads preparing in Cook’s Straits, for the Sydney market :—They are those of the poor creatures who were massacred at Bank’s Peninsula. Hands and arms are curing in the same manner—this is a new branch of the art, introduced amongst them by their highly civilized white brethren. The hand of the murdered chief, and part of the intestines, converted into a powder flask, we understand, are now in the possession of a gentleman in Sydney.” – The Sydney Herald, Mon 2 May 1831

“Here were scattered the various links which by a statesmanlike decision could have been welded into a chain of mutual attachment. Instead, the Colonial Office adopted the subterfuge of treating New Zealand as a substantive state, joined to Great Britain by ties of “friendship and alliance”, apparently because a few chiefs from a very small district had seen fit to attach their names to a document which breathed its spurious origin in every phrase. In point of fact no declaration, whatever its source, could transform the discordant and scattered tribes into an independent and sovereign state, since they lacked even the rudiments of a national government or a supreme authority capable of negotiating with foreign powers.” p19, McLintock (1958)

“The assembled chiefs were not givena  comprehensible account of why they were there…asked to choose from one of three flags on offer, the chiefs politely proceeded to vote for all three. It took the intervention of one of the Williams family’s Maori servants to compel each chief to opt for only one flag, write down the preferences as votes, then announce a result…Europeans present were then invited to sit down for an elegant lunch, while the assembled chiefs were givena  cauldron of cold porridge, which they were obliged to eat with their fingers.” – Michael King on selecting the Flag of the United Tribes of New Zealand in March 1835, p154 King (2003)

“A second and equally contrived ceremony took place again at Waitangi in October 1835. This time, in exchange for a second cauldron of porridge, Busby persuaded the same chiefs and some additional ones…designed specifically to thwart the French adventurer Charles de Thierry…an official in the Foreign Office in London referred to it as ‘silly and unauthorised’.” – ibid

Busby’s burlesque theater made no legal sense and no practical sense either. His were desperate attempts at acts of sovereignty. The signatories did not understand what was going on themselves or probably would have laughed! The Southern tribes invited along and to ‘lay aside their animosity’ as if by a click of Busby’s fingers were beyond laughter and such a tone-deaf and undiplomatic offer. The Foreign Office, Busby’s true target, were not so naive as to pass off Busby’s lies as true with pen-strokes back in England. They would do this for William Hobson within a few years but his burlesque theater was more convincing and he had more friends in high places. Ref. 1840: Hobson Crowns Himself, AHNZ

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Ref. Crown Colony Government in New Zealand, McLintock (1958)

Ref. The Penguin History of New Zealand, Michael King (2003)

See also. Measurement, Epistemology, Politics. NZB3 (2023)

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